Marie Antoinette and the Downfall of Royalty , livre ebook

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155 pages

English

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pubOne.info present you this wonderfully illustrated edition. Paris in 1792 is no longer what it was in 1789. In 1789, the old French society was still brilliant. The past endured beside the present. Neither names nor escutcheons, neither liveries nor places at court, had been suppressed. The aristocracy and the Revolution lived face to face. In 1792, the scene has changed. The Paris of the nobility is no longer in Paris, but at Coblentz. The Faubourg Saint-Germain is like a desert. Since June, 1790, armorial bearings have been taken down. The blazons of ancient houses have been broken and thrown into the gutters. No more display, no more liveries, no more carriages with coats-of-arms on their panels. Titles and manorial names are done away with. The Duke de Brissac is called M. Cosse; the Duke de Caraman, M. Riquet; the Duke d'Aiguillon, M. Vignerot. The Almanach royal of 1792 mentions not a single court appointment.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819946618
Langue	English

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Marie Antoinette
MARIE ANTOINETTE
AND
THE DOWNFALL OF ROYALTY
BY
IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND
TRANSLATED BY
ELIZABETH GILBERT MARTIN
WITH PORTRAIT
MARIE ANTOINETTE
AND
THE DOWNFALL OF ROYALTY.
I.
PARIS AT THE BEGINNING OF 1792.
Paris in 1792 is no longer what it was in 1789. In1789, the old French society was still brilliant. The past enduredbeside the present. Neither names nor escutcheons, neither liveriesnor places at court, had been suppressed. The aristocracy and theRevolution lived face to face. In 1792, the scene has changed. TheParis of the nobility is no longer in Paris, but at Coblentz. TheFaubourg Saint-Germain is like a desert. Since June, 1790, armorialbearings have been taken down. The blazons of ancient houses havebeen broken and thrown into the gutters. No more display, no moreliveries, no more carriages with coats-of-arms on their panels.Titles and manorial names are done away with. The Duke de Brissacis called M. Cossé; the Duke de Caraman, M. Riquet; the Duked'Aiguillon, M. Vignerot. The Almanach royal of 1792mentions not a single court appointment.
In 1789, it was still an exceptional thing for thenobility to emigrate. In 1792, it is the rule. Those among thenobles who have had the courage to remain at Paris in the midst ofthe furnace, so as to make a rampart for the King of their bodies,seem half ashamed of their generous conduct. The illusions ofworldliness have been dispelled. Nearly every salon was open in1789. In 1792, they are nearly all closed; those of the magistratesand the great capitalists as well as those of the aristocracy.Etiquette is still observed at the Tuileries, but there is noquestion of fêtes; no balls, no concerts, none of that elegance andanimation which once made the court a rendezvous of pleasures. In1789, illusions, dreams, a naïve expectation of the age of gold,were to be found everywhere. In 1792, eclogues and pastoral poetryare beginning to go out of fashion. The diapason of hatred ispitched higher. Already there is powder and a smell of blood in theair. A general instinct forebodes that France and Europe are on theverge of a terrible duel. On both sides passions have touched theirculminating point. Distrust and uneasiness are universal. Every daythe despotism of the clubs becomes more threatening. The Jacobinsdo not reign yet, but they govern. Deputies who, if left to theirown impulses, would vote on the conservative side, pronounce forthe Revolution solely through fear of the demagogues. In 1789, thereligious sentiment still retained power among the masses. In 1792,irreligion and atheism have wrought their havoc. In 1789, the mostardent revolutionists, Marat, Danton, Robespierre, were allroyalists. At the beginning of 1792, the republic begins to showits face beneath the monarchical mask.
The Tuileries, menaced by the neighboring lanes ofthe Carrousel and the Palais Royal, resembles a besieged fortress.The Revolution daily augments its trenches and parallels around thesanctuary of the monarchy. Its barracks are the faubourgs; itssoldiers, red-bonneted pikemen. Louis XVI. in his palace is like ageneral-in-chief in a stronghold, who should have voluntarilydampened his powder, spiked his cannon, and torn his flags. He nolonger inspires his troops with confidence. A capitulation seemsimminent. The unfortunate monarch still hopes vaguely forassistance from abroad, for the arrival of some liberating army.Vain hope! He is blockaded in his castle, and the moment is at handwhen he will be compelled to play the buffoon in a red bonnet.
Glance at the palace and see how closely it ishemmed in by the earthworks of the Revolution. The abode of luxuryand display, intended for fêtes rather than for war, PhilibertDelorme's chef-d'oeuvre has in its architecture none ofthose means of defence by which the military and feudalsovereignties of old times fortified their dwellings. On the sideof the courtyards a multitude of little streets contain a hostilepopulation ready to swell every riot. Near the Pavilion of Marsanis the Palais Royal, that headquarters of insurrection, with itscafés, its gambling-dens, its houses of ill-fame, its woodengalleries which are known as the camp of the Tartars. It is theDuke of Orleans who has democratized the Palais Royal. In spite ofthe sarcasms of the aristocracy and the lawsuits of neighboringproprietors, he has destroyed the fine gardens bounded by the ruede Richelieu, the rue des Petit-Champs, and the rue desBons-Enfants. In the place it occupied he has caused the rue deValois, the rue de Beaujolais, and the rue de Montpensier to beopened, all of them inhabited by a revolutionary population. Theremaining space he has surrounded on three sides with constructionspierced by galleries, where he has built the shops that form thefinest bazaar in Europe. The fourth side of these new constructionswas originally intended to form part of the Prince's palace, and tobe composed of an open colonnade supporting suites of apartments.But this side has not been erected. In place of it the Duke ofOrleans has run up some temporary wooden sheds, containing threerows of shops separated by two large passage-ways, the ground ofwhich has not even been made level.
The privileges pertaining to the Orleans familyprevent the police from entering the enclosure of the Palais Royal.Hence it becomes the rendezvous of all conspirators. The taking ofthe Bastille was plotted there, and there the 20th of June and the10th of August will yet be organized.
A little further off is the National Assembly. Itssessions are held in the riding-school built when the little LouisXV. was to be taught horsemanship. It adjoins the terrace of theFeuillants. One of its courtyards which looks towards the front ofthe edifice, is at the upper end of the rue de Dauphin. The otherextremity occupies the site where the rue Castiglione will beopened later on. There, close beside the Tuileries, sits theNational Assembly, the rival and victorious power that willovercome the monarchy.
The Assembly terrorizes the Tuileries. The JacobinClub terrorizes the Assembly. Close beside the Hall of the Manège,on the site to be occupied afterward by the market of Saint-Honoré,the revolutionary club holds its tumultuous sessions in the formerconvent founded in 1611 by the Jacobin, or Dominican, friars. Theclub meets three times a week, at seven in the evening. The hall isa long rectangle with a vaulted roof. Four rows of stalls occupythe longer sides, while the two ends serve as public galleries.Nearly in the middle of the hall, the speaker's platform and thepresident's writing-table stand opposite each other. Hither comeall ambitious revolutionists who desire to talk, to agitate, tomake themselves conspicuous. Here Robespierre lords it, not being adeputy in consequence of the law forbidding members of theConstituent Assembly to belong to the legislative body. Those wholove disorder come here to seek emotions. Some find lucrativeemployment, applause being paid for, and the different partieshaving each its claque in the galleries. Since April, 1791,the Jacobin Club has affiliations in two thousand French towns andvillages. At its orders and in its pay is an army of agents whosebusiness it is to make stump speeches, to sing in the streets, tomake propositions in cafés, to applaud or to hiss in the galleriesof the National Assembly. These hirelings usually receive aboutfive francs a day, but as the number of the chevaliers of therevolutionary lustrum increases, the pay diminishes, until it isfinally reduced to forty sous. Deserters and soldiers dismissedfrom their regiments for misconduct are admitted by preference.
For some days past, the Club of ModerateRevolutionists, friends of Lafayette, who might have closed the oldclubs after the sanguinary repression of the riot in theChamp-de-Mars, and who contented themselves with opening a new one,have been meeting in the convent of the Feuillants, rueSaint-Honoré. But this new club has not been a great success;moderation is not the order of the day; the Jacobins have regainedtheir empire, and on December 26, 1791, seals are placed on thedoor of the Club of the Feuillants.
At the other extremity of Paris there is a clubstill more inflammatory than that of the Jacobins: that of theCordeliers. “The Jacobins, ” said Barbaroux, “have no common aim,although they act in concert. The Cordeliers are bent on blood,gold, and offices. ” Speaking as a rule, the Cordeliers belong tothe Jacobin Club, while hardly a single Jacobin is a Cordelier. TheCordeliers are the advance-guard of the Revolution. They are, asCamille Desmoulins has said, Jacobins of the Jacobins. The chiefsare Danton, Marat, Hébert, Chaumette. They take their names fromthose religious democrats, the Minorite friars of Saint Francis,who wear a girdle of rope over their coarse gray habit. They meetin the Place of the School of Medicine, in a monastery whose churchwas built in the reign of Saint Louis, in 1259, with the fine paidas indemnity for a murder. In 1590, it became the resort of themost famous Leaguers. Chateaubriand says: “There are places whichseem to be the laboratory of seditions. ” How well this expressionof the author of the Mémoires d'Outre-tombe describes theclub-room of the Cordeliers! The pictures, the sculptured orpainted images, the veils and curtains of the convent, have beentorn down. The basilica displays nothing but its bare bones to theeyes of the spectator. At the apse, where wind and rain enterthrough the unglazed rose-window, joiners' work-benches serve as adesk for the president and as places on which to deposit the redcaps. Do you see the fallen beams, the wooden benches, thedismantled stalls, the relics of saints pushed or rolled againstthe walls to serve as benches for “dirty, dusty, drunken, sweatyspectators in torn jackets, pikes on their shoulders, or with theirbare arms crossed”? Do you hear the orators who “call each otherbeggars, pickpockets, robbers, assassins, t